The Gasparro collection holds a few finished presentation drawings and cast plaster coin models. Most images are rough sketches based on one of two themes: Lady Liberty and eagles. The eagles hold branches in their beaks and are surrounded by stars. Some soar in flight and others perch on rocks. Liberty’s face gazes both left and right and may wear a crown or liberty cap.

Each drawing, whether of Liberty or an eagle, changes ever so slightly. This body of work is a testament to the technological tools available to the 20th- century graphic artist. In these sketches Gasparro was not observing a live model in his studio or creating images with a computer. The designer instead used photographs from magazines and newspaper as his muse, and Xeroxes and tracing paper to make quick changes. Each time Gasparro xeroxed an image, he made a change to the drawing. A piece of tracing paper made it easy to turn the head of Liberty from facing right to left. Each drawing gives us evidence of Gasparro’s progression of an idea.

By viewing Gasparro’s drawings as a series, one is able to follow the evolution of the coin design from the artist’s perspective. This body of work offers a visual path into the thought processes of a working 20th-century graphic artist. It did not matter that some of these “ideas” did not become coins. It is the concrete visualization of the artist’s process that gives this collection its historic value.

Frank Gasparro was born August 26, 1909, on the centennial of President Lincoln’s birth and by chance, the same year Victor David Brenner put Abraham Lincoln’s portrait on the obverse of the penny. Fifty years later in 1959, the 150th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s birth, Frank Gasparro placed the Lincoln Memorial (replacing the previous wheat ears design) on the reverse side of the Lincoln penny.

Douglas Martin of The New York Times quoted Christina Hansen (Gasparro’s daughter) in Gasparro’s obituary, “Frank Gasparro, 92, of Mint; Art Is on 100 Billion Pennies,” October 3, 2001, “…he originally aspired to make sculptures like those of Rodin and Michelangelo, but came to take pride in his billions of lowly pennies. He was known to show cashiers the reverse side of a penny and announce that he had designed it.”

Gasparro’s Lincoln Memorial Reverse remained on the penny for 49 years. Used and collected by generations, it may be Gasparro’s very long fifteen minutes of fame. Gasparro’s coin designs also include the presidential coat of arms on the Kennedy half reverse; the obverse and reverse of the Eisenhower dollar; the Susan B. Anthony dollar; and multitudes of medals and commemoratives that he continued to design for the United States Mint and private mints after his retirement from federal service.

In this photograph Frank Gasparro (in the foreground) holds a plaster model for his proposed dollar coin design of the Flowing Hair Liberty with Phrygian cap (liberty cap.) In the background are two other models of his design. The first illustrates Mary Brooks, 31st director of the United States Mint, 1969—1977 the other is unidentified. The photographer is unknown.

In this page advertising coins, Frank Gasparro drew directly over images of the Peace and Morgan dollars to perfect his own prototype of Lady Liberty. The process of borrowing imagery in this manner to make your own designs was a 20th—century phenomenon. Only when reproductions and prints were cheap and easily available could this type of sampling be done.

Gasparro's drawing of a coin over a photocopy of a newspaper clipping, turns this fashion model's profile into Lady Liberty wearing an Albert Nipon designer suit. She looks very similar to a Flowing Hair Liberty

The technology of Gasparro's time allowed him to work on multiple copies of the same image without having to redraw the image every time. Here Gasparro not only added marks with pencil on the Phrygian cap (Liberty cap) but also removed marks by painting over them in white-out fluid. The process was limitless, and the drawing was complete only after it matched his vision.

Gasparro used both side of this sheet of paper to make gesture drawings—drawings done quickly to capture the motion of life. Here we have a bust of a Phrygian—capped Lady Liberty on one side of the paper and a full figure on the other.

In this marker sketch, Frank Gasparro drew an allegorical figure resmbling Liberty. She wears earrings and a crown of skyscrapers topped by a cow. Here the artist shows off his deft hand and sense of play.

The Gasparro Collection at the National Museum of American History demonstrates the artist's constant mental and tactile preoccupation with the next coin design. Many of his drawings illustrate allegorical figures. This quick design is labeled Victory "1776-1781."

Here Gasparro drew a view of Freedom from the bronze statue on the dome of the United States Capitol, originally designed by Thomas Crawford in 1863. Gasparro placed the allegorical figure into a mock-up for a new coin design. As the Mint chief engraver, he was always looking for new ways to use American iconography on coins. The large number of drawings that were preserved in many numismatic collections are evidence that Gasparro experimented and created many more designs for coins than were actually struck.